Jones And Majumder Elected To Fellowship In The American Physical Society
WILLIAMSTOWN - Two members of the Williams College physics department, Kevin Jones and Tiku Majumder, were elected to Fellowship in the American Physical Society. They join Williams Professor William Wootters who was elected a Fellow in 1999.The prestigious American Physical Society (APS) was founded in 1899 with the purpose of advancing and diffusing the knowledge of physics. The Society is actively involved in public and governmental affairs and is an important part of the international physics community. Jones and Majumder were inducted as Fellows of the Society at the May meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics along with eight other American and eight international scientists. Each year no more than 0.5 percent of the current APS membership earn this honor.
Jones, the William Edward McElfresh Professor of Physics, was chosen for his seminal contributions to the study of collisions between cold atoms and for the development of photoassociation spectroscopy in ultracold gasses. In addition to his teaching, he has a long standing collaboration with one of the world's leading atomic physics research groups, the Laser Cooling and Trapping group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Williams undergraduates frequently participate in the research he conducts there. He is the author of numerous highly cited articles in the leading journals of physics, including a recent comprehensive survey of the field of photoassociation spectroscopy published in the Reviews of Modern Physics. In addition to having taught most of the physics courses at Williams, he is particularly interested in the department's tutorial courses. "Teaching tutorial courses gives me a chance to track individual students. It is very gratifying to see their growth -- to watch them become more sophisticated in approaching complex problems and more effective and efficient in communicating their scientific ideas." He received his B.A. from Williams and his Ph. D. from Stanford University.
Majumder was acknowledged for his precision measurements of atomic structure that test atomic theory and probe the basic laws and symmetries of nature, and for engaging talented undergraduate physics students in making such measurements. His recent work has helped establish new experimental techniques associated with high-precision spectrography, which have broad applicability in the physical sciences within experimental physics. His research has been supported over the past decade by grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as a Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corporation, a private foundation for the advancement of science and technology. He was one of the two winners of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Precision Measurement Grant Competition in 2000. Majumder has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including the Physical Review, often with student co-authors. An important part of his research effort at Williams has been the laboratory research-training of more than 30 Williams College physics students at all stages of their education. His many former senior thesis research students have gone on to Ph.D. programs at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton. Majumder completed his B.A. at Yale College and his Ph.D. at Harvard University.
